Equality in the SFWA

A German university points the way:

The University of Leipzig has voted to adopt the feminine version of the word for “professor” as its default. In German Professorin refers to a female professor while Professor is the male equivalent. Under the new measures, written documents will use the term Professorinnen when referring to professors in general. A footnote is to explain that male professors are also included in the description.

This solves so many problems!  I’m sure the likes of McRapey and McRacy will be delighted to henceforth be known as science fiction authoresses.  They’ll probably throw on pretty dresses to celebrate this bold step forward in gender equity. 

You know McRapey is just dying to break out his little red pumps again.

Mailvox: illegal immigration isn’t the problem

It’s not the illegals, as this younger restrictionist has good cause to recognize.  It is the legal immigrants, and the fact that there have been far too many of them from too different cultures:

Most people are stunned when I say I’m for lower legal immigration. I know with most it would paint me as a bigot and I don’t give a damn. It’s not that I fear what I don’t know. It’s that I speak several foreign languages, have been extensively south of the border in different countries, and see what is going to happen to us.

Just as actual proximity to diversity and vibrancy tends to reduce positive social contact, actual familiarity with other societies tends to reduce enthusiasm for immigration from them.  In general, the more enthusiastic about diversity and immigration a white American is these days, the more parochial they are.  If they so much as mention food with regards to the issue, you can be certain that their experience of other cultures is essentially limited to restaurants.

It’s not the culinary spices that are the issue here.  I speak three languages and have a basic smattering of two others.  I’m not recognizably American anymore; on our recent trip to Rome, I discovered that “American” isn’t even the second guess of people I meet these days.  And it is my experience of transitioning from one society to another, and of witnessing others do so and fail to do so, that informs my opinion.  It is that experience that makes me certain that the large scale immigration of the last fifty years from the Third World is going to have dreadful consequences in Europe and America alike.

Seriously Fascist Women’s Association

One of the cross-dressing lights of the New Equalitarians created a helpful list of the most censorious liberal fascists in the SFWA.  With one or two exceptions, it’s a useful list of nobodies and mediocrities whose books you now know you can safely continue to ignore.

It’s a bit amusing to read through it and realize there are precisely two authors on it whose work can reasonably be compared to that of the two men who are being so widely castigated… and I’m not a fan of either Resnick or Malzberg.  I merely support their right to write opinion pieces and freely express their opinions in them, regardless of how offensive these delicate, fainting flowers may find those opinions to be.  Of course, in the present SFWA, such support for free speech renders me a radical extremist, nearly as dangerous as the deeply offensive cover of Issue 200.

Bonus points for whomever can figure out how many of these
self-appointed censors have published novels with more “offensive”
covers than the Red Sonja illustration on the Bulletin cover that has
inspired such an epic collective hissy fit.

It’s been interesting to see that Laura Resnick, who is usually very quick to leap in and loudly condemn anyone suspected of insufficient enthusiasm for equalitarianism, has been silent concerning the public witchburning of her father. It’s also intriguing to see how these liberal fascists claim labeling two old men “sexist
bigots” and openly calling for an end to their column is acceptable, but
identifying them as “censorious” is, and here I quote the SFWA
moderator, “abusive behavior”.

    SFWA burns a witch

    Amanda takes exception to the ongoing SFWA witch hunt, which is being led by Rapey McRaperson and his sidekick, Rachel Swirsky:

    What did Resnick and Malzberg do that was so bad, you ask? Well, at the beginning of the column in issue 200, he admits to have written — gasp — porn. And he sold it to a “lady” editor. He identifies female authors and editors as “lady” writer and “lady” editor. Oh, and he’s pissed — not that I necessarily blame him. He and Malzberg had been attacked in the SFWA forums for stating their opinions  in what is basically an op-ed column (gee, I thought that’s what op-eds were for). People were demanding that SFWA censor them by not letting them write the column any longer and, gasp, he called them out on it.

    Could he have been more circumspect? Probably. Are some of his ideas old-fashioned? Of course. But that isn’t, in my opinion, the real crime with what’s been going on. The crime is how the detractors behaved. They took their issues with Resnick and Malzberg public without giving the public the opportunity to read the columns in question and make up their own mind. They attacked two men who have more experience in the field and, in the vast majority of cases, more sales than these attackers will ever hope to have. Instead of simply asking to post a counter piece to what Resnick and Malzberg said, they went on the attack, with all the name calling and vitriol they accused the two gentlemen — gasp, have I just committed the crime of sexism by calling them gentlemen? — of being sexist and misogynistic.

    In other words, this very vocal but apparently small group resorted to bullying and threats to leave or never join SFWA in order to impose their own views on SFWA. Pardon me for not jumping on their bandwagon but I don’t support bullies and you can sure as hell bet that if the tables were turned on them, they’d be whining about how we just don’t understand and we aren’t enlightened or whatever the latest bullshit politically correct term happens to be.

    This is an issue, if you want to give it that much credence, that should have been handled in-house. But no, these bullies took their complaint public but didn’t want to give the public the whole story. After all, if they did, the public might just see through all their catch phrases and righteous indignation. They demanded SFWA act so this atrocity never be allowed to occur again.

    And SFWA caved and did so publicly and in a way that adds to the condemnation that has been heaped on Resnick and Malzberg, as well as the editor of the Bulletin.

    The much-criticized editor of the SFWA Bulletin, Jean Rabe, resigned under pressure today.  It appears Mike Resnick and Barry Malzberg will be stripped of their column as well. It shouldn’t be long before all criticism of women, romance novels in space, and the Obama administration are banned in the SFWA Forum.

    It’s absolutely freaking hilarious.  I just wish I could share all the self-congratulatory back-patting over all the brave, brave courage that the censorious freakshows believe they are exhibiting by boldly taking on chainmail bikinis and references to ladies.

    Boomer Suicide

    Reading this Washington Post headline just makes this Generation Xer feel like bursting into song:
     Boomer suicide (Just do it)
    Boomer suicide, (they blew it)Boomer suicide (we knew it)Boomer suicide (yeah, do it)  Age and arrogance don’t mix
    Your generation’s so over
    We’ll read your last statement from your credit cardLife was so easy but you made it so hard
    Feel the power of revenge Your children parked you all alone
    Your future’s dark and your bills are biggerPut the gun in your mouth and we’ll pull the damn trigger
     Boomer suicide (dumb fuckers)Boomer suicide (thumbsuckers)Boomer suicide (old bastards)Boomer suicide (die faster)  “Baby boomers are killing themselves at an alarming rate, raising question: Why?  He is part of an alarming trend among baby boomers, whose suicide rates shot up precipitously between 1999 and 2010.”  Why?  The journalist obviously is not an American of Generation X. The generation that has had to put up with the vagaries of the Baby Boomers for literally its entire existence knows very well why they are killing themselves at an unusually high rate. It is because Baby Boomers are disproportionately inclined to be narcissistic, selfish, short-sighted, superficial bastards who don’t give a damn about anything except themselves, and they are psychologically incapable of grasping the basic concepts of mortality or graceful old age.
    ““We’ve been a pretty youth-oriented generation,” said Bob Knight,
    professor of gerontology and psychology at the University of Southern
    California, who is also a baby boomer. “We haven’t idealized growing up
    and getting mature in the same way that other cohorts have.”  Even
    as they become grandparents and deal with normal signs of getting old,
    such as hearing and vision losses, many boomers are reluctant to accept
    the realities of aging, Knight said.”
      You don’t say…. The realization that 65 is not, in fact, the new 18, and they really and truly are not cool anymore, is simply proving too much for them to bear.

    Now, I wouldn’t want anyone to think Generation X is actually inclined to celebrate these rampant Boomer suicides.  It doesn’t fill us with glee to know they are offing themselves en masse, merely a modicum of appreciation for the first positive and non-selfish consequences their generation’s actions have ever produced.  Say what you will about them, but at least they are saving us an amount of effort.

    There is no escape

    Just when the central bankers think they’re out, economic reality keeps pulling them back in:

    Since the crisis began, there have been several apparent economic springs, prompting the Fed to cease asset purchases, only to be forced back to the printing press again when the economy flagged. What may be different this time is that central bankers as a breed are losing their nerve in the pursuit of unconventional monetary policy. Some now openly question its effectiveness in stimulating the real economy. Others worry about its distributional consequences, with debtors favoured at the expense of savers. Still others worry about the re-emergence, in the hunt for yield, of asset price bubbles. They also worry about loss of independence, with QE now quite widely seen as a form of government financing. In almost all cases, there is growing concern about the sheer scale of balance sheet expansion.

    Are these worries well founded? Most certainly. But are they enough to justify a return to a more normal interest rate environment? Not as long as deflation and a weak economy remain the primary risks for many advanced economies.

    Central banks seem caught on a treadmill of money printing, where even the merest hint of exit threatens another financial crisis. This, in turn, would require a further dose of money printing to blow away the consequent economic fallout. There’s no escape.

    Well, there are two, to be precise.  Ice and fire.  Inflation or deflation.  I hope to return to the subject next week; this is a rather busy one for me.  But it is interesting to see mainstream reports about central bankers losing faith in the effectiveness of Neo-Keynesian stimulation.

    The Gatekeepers know the gates are crumbling

    One of the chief beneficiaries of the crumbling system, James Patterson, makes a ludicrous pitch for a bailout of the publishing industry that is quite rightly ripped apart by Kenton Kilgore:

    Recently, mega-author James Patterson took out an ad in the New York Times Book Review asking for the government to bail out libraries and the book publishing/selling industry….  In his ad, Patterson asks, “If there are no bookstores, no libraries, no serious publishers with passionate, dedicated, idealistic editors, what will happen to our literature?  Who will discover and mentor new writers?  Who will publish our important books?”

    So, the three-headed serpent that is Big Authors + Big Publishing + Big Distributors–the same serpent that made Patterson and his partners rich by cranking out about 10 of his books every year–is eating itself.  Well, we can’t have that!  What would be our society be without the ”important books” that Patterson lists in his ad–as well as his splatterfests named after lines from nursery rhymes (Along Came a Spider, Kiss the Girls, Pop Goes the Weasel)?  And what about Twilight?  And the collected masterpieces of Danielle Steel?

    It’s more than a little amusing to me that while a brilliant businessman – if shameless literary hack – like Patterson can see what is taking place in the publishing world, the idiot parasites who have taken over the SFWA remain totally clueless about those changes and are more concerned about chainmail bikinis and the fact that Mike Resnick and Barry Malzburg referred to a woman they knew forty years ago as a “lady” rather than as an editor in the SFWA Bulletin. 

    (Believe it or not, that is the urgent DEFCON 1 situation to which Rapey McRaperson was referring and pledging his name, fame, and fortune to address this weekend.  That’s right; the SFWA is going to deal with its “problem” of the old guard by silencing them and ensuring that no new dissenting voices are permitted to arise.  You will RESPECT fat old women writing dreadful books about warrior women and necrobestial love triangles or you will be SILENT!)

    It is going to be so much fun to watch these awful people shriek and scream as the cold equations of the publishing business gradually penetrate their thick, empty skulls.  I’ve been asked, on occasion, why I remain a member of the SFWA considering that only about ten percent of the active membership appears to share my perspective on the ongoing developments and the majority of the membership can’t stand me or the intellectual liberty for which I stand.  To which I can only respond: “Give up my front row seat to the auto-bonfire of the witches?  Are you mad?”

    Simply reading the litany of sob stories and complaints that make up the greater part of the SFWA Forum makes for a pure and unadulterated pleasure for anyone with a sense of either justice or humor. And it is only going to get more entertaining as the economy implodes and the more publishers go the way of Night Shade Books. It will be a delight to see proud editor/authors forced to resort to the very independent publishing they once scorned as being intrinsically inferior… and then watch them flounder and fail as they belatedly discover that their “popularity” was artificial and mostly the result of superior access to the chief distribution channel.

    As one who was briefly permitted entry by the gatekeepers through a side entrance, I perhaps have a more accurate perspective on the situation than most who are either purely insiders or outsiders.  I still have access to a number of executives at several major publishers, although, as it happens, none at the genre publishers.  And I can testify that the mainstream executives understand very well that their conventional business appears to be terminal, as increasing ebook sales at steadily falling prices are not be able to make up for the combination of a) declining print sales, b) vanishing print outlets, c) competition from independents.  It should get very interesting indeed when Barnes & Noble either files for bankruptcy or is acquired by Amazon.

    The Gatekeepers are desperate because they are standing on walls that are turning to sand beneath their feet.  But do not miss the confession that is implicit in Patterson’s corrupt appeal; without their structural advantages, “serious publishers with passionate, dedicated, idealistic editors” cannot compete on a level playing field with independents writing books of which they do not approve.

    Note, in particular, the adjectives “dedicated” and “idealistic”.  Dedicated to what ideals?  Patterson’s plea is an implicit admission of the very bias that Standout Authors such as Sarah Hoyt and Larry Correia have been describing, and which those who have benefited from it have so staunchly denied.

    When A GAME OF THRONES was great

    Although we bitch and moan about GRR Martin, and deservedly so, I think it is important to remember how very, very good Martin was in his first three novels.  Let’s face it, the reason we complain – or write successor works – is due to the intensity of our disappointment with the last two works in light of the previous three.  It is enlightening to see The Red Wedding again through the eyes of someone who is not familiar with the books:

    What’s most interesting to me as this third season of Game of Thrones bleeds out all around us is the way its creators — Martin, certainly, as well as his able adaptors, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss — are playing with more than just television storytelling conventions. They’re playing with storytelling itself. Robb and his family aren’t just cursed for believing in fairy tales — disembowled dreams like justice and happy endings — they themselves are fairy tales. Robb was the young prince boosted by righteousness and romance. Sansa was the beautiful innocent with visions of love and lemon cakes dancing in her pretty, untroubled head. And Arya — so painfully close to her family, thankfully not quite close enough to die alongside them — was the stereotypical tomboy who dreams of becoming a warrior. Once again it fell to the Hound to disabuse a Stark of her idyllic prentensions. Arya’s idea of a “real” killer isn’t a scarred pragmatist like Sandor Clegane — who, despite the little lady’s constant proclamations, has always struck me as a pretty nice guy, all things considered! — it’s a fantasy fulfillment machine like Jaqen H’ghar. You remember him, right? He’s the face-changing Lothario who granted Arya three wishes last year then vanished in a puff of smoke. That’s not a real killer. That’s a genie. Can you imagine Martin’s version of Snow White? The wicked Queen would reign supreme while the heroine would wind up crucified in Littlefinger’s brothel.

    Fans of Westeros can, and should, be critical of Martin. But they should not forget the reason they became fans in the first place.  Whether you like what he does or not, no one has done it better.  My own Arts of Dark and Light are neither a ripoff of Martin nor a homage, but they are quite obviously influenced by him.

    And who knows, perhaps he’ll pull a dragon or two out of a hat and The Winds of Winter will be more akin to the earlier books.  At least until it is published, we can hope.

    Obama administration caught lying

    Not just a lame duck, but a lying lame duck.  The plot, she thickens:

    Interviews with IRS employees have established that the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the Internal Revenue Service was engaged in targeting tea party groups and other conservative organizations for unfair levels of scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status.

    Rep. Darrel lssa, chairman of powerful House Committee of Oversight and Government Reform, made that startling announcement on CNN Sunday morning.

    ‘As late as last week,’ he said, ‘the [Obama] administration was still trying to say the [IRS targeting scandal] was from a few rogue agents in Cincinnati, when in fact the indication is that they were directly being ordered from Washington.’

    ‘Did [your supervisor] give you any indication of the need for the search [for tea party groups], any more context?’ one IRS witness was asked in a closed-door interview.

    ‘He told me that Washington, D.C., wanted some cases,’ came the reply.

    The employee, who said he or she was evaluating 40 such applications for tax-exempt status from conservative organizations at the time, said ‘some went to Washington. D.C. … I sent seven.’

    With Tom Brokaw, of all people, making noises about Attorney General Eric Holder having to go, the IRS scandal is just beginning to heat up.

    Mailvox: they want to disbelieve

    Obvious challenges my statement about introducing 16-bit color and 3D graphics hardware to the game industry:

    Oh, you did? Which game was that? Do you have anything at all that backs that up?

    Yes, I did. Concerning the hardware, see Computer Gaming World’s 1994 article on the 3GA and its reference to my title as “Trans-Dimensional Evangelist”.  Concerning 16-bit color, I direct your attention to the September 1997 Computer Gaming World review of Rebel Moon Rising.

    “Rebel Moon Rising makes use of Intel’s new MMX technology. Fenris Wolf used MMX to gain a reasonable frame rate at high resolutions with 16-bit color. This let them create dynamic lighting effects that could change on the fly and even move with the different characters.  For example, a moving orange glow might indicate a nearby enemy jump trooper.

    Another new technology feature is voice recognition. One early Windows 95 game, ACES OF THE DEEP, used speech recognition, but the implementation was very limited.  In Rebel Moon Rising, the list of usable words is quite large.  While you can actually give orders to AI squad mates in a limited way, it’s mostly used to communicate with other players in multiplayer games. You can speak into the microphone to chat, rather than having to hunt for keyboard commands – something especially handy for Internet play, which the game also supports.”

    Now, none of this proves the feature we are going to introduce to the game industry in our upcoming announcement of our forthcoming game is going to make that game successful.  And it demonstrates that even if we are the first to introduce it, we will not necessarily be the primary beneficiaries of it, or be generally known to have introduced it.  I have, in fact, repeatedly expressed my belief that every game company is going to follow our example very quickly; that is the primary reason the innovation is going to be significant. The mere fact that people like Obvious see fit to doubt what was once known by literally everyone involved suffices to prove that credit primarily tends to be given to those who are both innovative and massively successful.  And sometimes only the latter.

    But Jensen Huang, Hock Leow, Steve Mosher, Chris Taylor, Marc Rein, John Carmack, Andy Grove, and those who were executives at companies like Intel, Rendition, 3D Labs, Diamond, and Hercules, all know what happened.  And thanks to Mike Weksler at CGW, it’s a matter of public, if obscure, record.

    This is another fundamental difference between Right and Left.  The Right is mostly indifferent to the various successes of the Left, whereas the Left is desperate to not only deprive the Right of any opportunity to succeed, but also to deny every last vestige of whatever success was already achieved.  Obvious’s petty desire to disbelieve one minor chapter in the history of the game industry is the goblin to the ideologically censorious behavior of the SF/F publishing ogre lords.